Maggie (2 page)

She returned to the kitchen and put a couple of logs on the fire and, taking the lid off the top of the stove, swung the heavy griddle which served as a frying-pan over the flames. Her father liked fried food and Maggie knew that if she
could get him to eat immediately when he arrived, he would soon pass out. She fried slices of black pudding and white pudding, two rashers of bacon, a slice of dumpling and a slice of haggis. It could all be reheated quickly if her father arrived late.

The bell above the shop door clanged and her heart leapt into her mouth.

John Fraser came lurching into the kitchen. He was a tall, stooped, thin, gangling man with a lantern-jawed face and very pale blue eyes under shaggy eyebrows.

“Whit’s this?” he demanded. “Are ye wastin’ my food?”

“It’s for you, Father,” said Maggie, reaching for an egg.

“Oh, it is, is it?” he sneered. “Weel, afore ye dae anything else, jist gang ben the shop and bring me a dram.”

Maggie’s heart sank. If he had eaten right away, then she would have been safe. But a dram before the meal always led to another and another and then a beating. Also, he was speaking English which was a very bad sign. Mr. Fraser spoke English only to ‘the tourists’ as he called anyone who came from a distance of more than twenty miles. The only other time he spoke English was when he was about to take off his leather belt and beat his daughter.

Maggie went into the shop to search under the counter which was where the bottle of whisky was kept. While she was bending under the counter, her eye fell on a cardboard box full of small bottles which had obviously just arrived that day. On the outside of the box it said ‘Dr. Simpson’s Sleeping Draught’.

Maggie looked from the half-empty whisky bottle to the bottle of sleeping medicine and her heart began to hammer against her ribs.

“What’s keepin’ ye?” yelled her father. “A taste o’ the belt is what you need to cure your lazy ways.”

Maggie ceased to think. She picked up the bottle of sleeping draught, pulled the small cork out with her teeth
and tipped a large measure into a glass and then topped the glass up with whisky. Somewhere outside the walls of bone-like numbness that pressed on her brain, her conscience was clamouring to get in. She carried the glass in very carefully and set it on the table.

He picked up the glass and raised it to the light. “Now, what did ye do with yersel’ today?” he asked, his voice soft with menace.

Maggie stared at him, her white face even whiter, glowing luminous in the dark, firelit kitchen. Her mother had read the Bible to her every night and Maggie had learnt all about the fear of God, Mrs. Fraser being very fond of the gorier parts of the Old Testament. She knew if she lied, them the wrath of God would be terrible indeed.

“I…” began Maggie miserably when there came a pounding at the shop door.

“Go and see who that iss,” snapped Mr. Fraser, his Highland accent made doubly sibilant by the amount of whisky he had consumed. “Serve them what they want. But keep the blind down or we will haff some of they jealous shopkeepers from Beauly complaining about me opening on the half day.”

Glad of the small reprieve, Maggie went quickly into the shop and opened the door.

The man who stood there seemed to fill the doorway. Behind him in the rain stood a horse and gig.

“Yes, sir?” asked Maggie.

The man did not reply but stood looking at her. He was thick-set with a large beefy face and a thick black moustache. He wore a hard bowler hat and an Inverness cape over a blue worsted suit. His eyes were small and black. They roamed over Maggie’s body in a way that made her pull her shawl more tightly about her shoulders.

“Yes, sir?” demanded Maggie again, her voice sharpened with fright. For the full enormity of what she had done
finally hit her and all she wanted to do was to run back into the kitchen and snatch the glass from her father’s hand.

“I would like two ounces of black tobacco,” said the man, stepping into the shop and removing his bowler to reveal a thick head of brown hair well-oiled with bear grease.

“Certainly,” said Maggie breathlessly.

“It’s bad weather in these parts,” said the man, leaning against the counter. “I am from Glasgow.”

“Yes,” said Maggie faintly, trembling fingers measuring out the tobacco.

“Aye, I am an Inspector of Police.” Maggie dropped the tobacco on the floor and stared at him wild-eyed as if he had somehow, by diabolical means, divined her crime and was now playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse.

“Now whit have ah said to frichten a beauty like you?” he grinned, offering a hand which Maggie shook. His hand was like a fat, damp cushion.

“My name is Macleod,” the customer went on. “Inspector James Macleod.”

There was a terrible crash from the kitchen and Maggie let out a squeak of pure terror.

Mr. Macleod looked at her sharply and then walked into the kitchen with Maggie hurrying after him.

Mr. Fraser lay on the kitchen floor, snoring stentoriously. The glass which had held his whisky—and sleeping potion—lay unbroken on the floor beside him.

Mr. Macleod looked from the glass to the bottle on the table and then leaned forward and sniffed.

“Drunk,” he said, straightening up. “Dead drunk.”

“Oh, please, sir,” begged Maggie, “if I can just give you your tobacco…”

“Nonsense. I’ll get him to his bed. Your faither? Aye, ah thought so. Where does he sleep?”

Maggie pushed open the door of a small bedroom which led off the kitchen. The inspector took Mr. Fraser under the
shoulders and dragged him into the bedroom and hefted him onto the bed.

“He’ll sleep it off,” he grinned. “Well, lassie, let’s hae that tobacco.”

Maggie flew into the shop, desperately anxious to get rid of him.

She measured out the tobacco and rolled it up in a twist of paper.

Mr. Macleod patted his pockets. “I’ve no small change,” he said. “Tell you what, I’m only going as far as Muir of Ord. I’ll be back the morn’s morn, and I’ll pay ye then.”

“That will be all right,” said Maggie, while inside her head a voice screamed, “Go!”

There was something furtive and sly about the big inspector. His little black eyes took a final promenade over her body and then to Maggie’s infinite relief, he left, cramming his bowler hat down on his head.

She shut and locked the shop door after him and went slowly into her father’s bedroom.

Mr. Fraser lay snoring with his mouth open. The small room smelled strongly of spirits.

“What if he dies?” thought Maggie, “and me with an inspector of the Glasgow police to witness I was the only person here!”

She went back into the shop and carefully read the label on the now two-thirds full bottle of sleeping potion. It did not list the ingredients, only quotes from letters from eminent people who claimed to have been soothed and refreshed by it. “This mixture is tasteless,” she read. Goodness! She had never even thought of that.

There was nothing she could do now but fill up the bottle with water so that her father would not notice the missing liquid and then pray he would not die. She wanted him to die and had often longed for his death. But she could not think of living with such a weight of guilt.

After some time, she reheated the meal she had prepared for her father and ate it. With luck, he would remember nothing. If she left the food uneaten, then he would beat her for wasting it.

Feeling calmer after she had eaten, Maggie took another look at her father. He had rolled on his side and was sleeping peacefully. The fear began to leave her heart.

The inspector would not return. He had seemed a sly, cunning sort of man and was no doubt in the habit of cheating small shopkeepers. And tomorrow would not be so bad provided she said nothing to annoy her father.

Her father was only tolerable the day after one of his drinking bouts when he was consumed by guilt. Maggie decided to say nothing about the inspector.

She was so very sure he would not be back.

The small shop was busy the next day. Pale and wan, John Fraser shambled about behind the counter, darting furtive looks at his daughter as she sliced bacon and cut cheese and measured lentils and dried peas and sugar into paper bags. He was wondering how on earth she had managed to get him to bed. Or had he gone to bed himself? But, he had woken with all his clothes on, and his boots as well.

Maggie worked away efficiently. The wrath of God would soon fall on her head, that she knew. For one could not do so dreadful a thing as drug one’s father’s whisky and escape Scot free. If His eye was on the sparrow, it was most certainly fixed on one small sinner with a bottle of sleeping potion in her hand.

She could only make up her mind to accept her punishment stoically when it came. In the meantime, she could only be glad that the inspector had not put in an appearance.

But, all of a sudden, he was there, leaning up against the counter and grinning with lecherous familiarity. He paid for the tobacco and Maggie took the money in her small hand
and waited for her father to spring forward and demand to know what it was all about. But for once, John Fraser stayed in the corner of the shop, listening.

The inspector questioned Maggie jovially about her age, her life and her friends. Maggie patiently answered all of his questions, waiting for her father to interrupt as he always did when some of the male customers seemed to become too interested. But still her father stayed away, pretending to count tins of groceries in the corner.

The inspector then bragged about his big house in Glasgow and how he expected to be made superintendent one day soon. “Aye, it’s a fine big house, I have,” boasted the inspector, “right out in the West End, the best part o’ the town. It needs a mistress though…” He suddenly grinned slyly at John Fraser and laid a finger alongside his nose.

John Fraser came forward at last, cracking the knuckles of his long, bony, red hands.

“I jalouse your frae the big city, sir,” said Mr. Fraser. “Perhaps you would care tae step into the back shop and hae a drap o’ the cratur to warm ye?”

The inspector grinned again, and his grin was reflected on John Fraser’s face as if both men had come to some telepathic understanding.

Maggie watched them go in amazement. It was unheard of for her father to offer anyone hospitality.

She served the other customers and then closed and locked the shop. Occasionally the voices from the kitchen would rise and she could hear, at one point, her father protesting, “No, I wad not take that sort of money for a cow let alone for ma ain…” and then his voice dropped and the rest of the words were lost.

Maggie waited and waited, but still the murmur of voices rose and fell.

At last, she opened the shop door again and slipped outside. The road curved one way to Beauly, the other to
Inverness. The evening was calm and still with great shafts of yellow sunlight shining down on the deer forest on the other side of the road. A clump of foxgloves glowed in the clear light and clumps of blue harebells trembled at the edge of the ribbon of road.

There was the cracking of a twig and Maggie looked up. A doe stood at the edge of the trees across the road.

“Maggie!” sounded John Fraser’s voice from the back of the shop.

The doe and Maggie looked at each other with wide frightened eyes. Then the doe turned and fled into the dark green gloom of the forest and Maggie walked back into the shop and shut the door and locked it.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked into the kitchen. To her surprise her father did not seem to have had very much to drink. The inspector had been drinking heavily, for his red face was even redder and little beads of sweat stood out on his brow above his black, glittering eyes.

“Aye, there’s my girl,” said Mr. Fraser, putting a bony arm about Maggie’s shoulders. “Weel, Maggie, ye cannae say I don’t do ma best for ye.

“You’re to be married to Mr. James Macleod.”

The Earl of Strathairn looked out of the window of his carriage and shivered. “It looks like hell,” he said, and his Highland manservant, Roshie Munro, leaned forward and arranged the thick carriage rugs around his master’s knees.

“Weel, my lord,” he said, “Glasgow was aye like this.”

The earl shivered again. Thick, yellow, acrid fog swirled around the streets, thinning slightly at the corners to show vistas of looming black tenements with their cavernous closes, or communal passageways, lit by flaring jets of gas. Incredibly filthy shawled women loomed up out of the fog, their scabby faces and dropsical bodies looking like something out of the illustrations of Hogarth. A drunk, red-eyed and wild, peered in the window as the carriage halted in the press of traffic and the earl turned his head away and longed for the blue skies and heat of India.

India. It seemed that only a short time ago that country had been his future, and his only worries his mess bills.

He had been captain in a sepoy regiment on the North-West Frontier. His parents, a scholarly couple, were dead, leaving him only a small annuity from their meagre estate near Oxford. He was thirty-two and unmarried, since he felt he could not afford the added expense of a wife. He had never been in love. He had had many opportunities to wed quite wealthy girls but had found himself drawn to none of them and would not marry for money. Besides,
most of the girls who were shipped out to India were the ones who had failed to ‘take’ during several London Seasons and were not noted for their looks. He had once toyed with the idea of paying serious court to a very beautiful Indian girl, but her family was of a very high caste indeed, and wished to do better for her than to see her wed to a poor British captain.

He had been neither happy nor unhappy. He had made his regiment his life and had expected to remain with it until he retired. Then a letter had arrived from a firm of Scottish solicitors.

His uncle, the Earl of Strathairn, a gentleman he had never seen, had died, and, there being no direct heir, Captain Peter Strange had found himself the new earl and possessed of a handsome fortune. He was promptly released from his regiment so that he might take up his new honours.